After inspecting Australia’s most remote weather station at Giles in Western Australia, it was time to head further west and travel one of Australia’s great four wheel drive tracks, the Abandoned Section of the Old Gunbarrel Highway, which was put down by Australia’s last great modern explorers, the late Len Beadell and his famous Gunbarrel Road Construction Party, during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

The only down side with this confluence visit, was that when I had started planning this trip twelve months previously, this confluence still remained unlogged. Checking the Degree Confluence page when we returned home, I found out to my surprise that we had been pipped to the post by just over one month. On the other side of things, how often would a very remote confluence that has not been logged get visited twice within 5 weeks?

Making our way along the Old Gunbarrel, we reached a point that was about as close to the confluence as we could get. Again any cross country travel was out of the question, due to the tall Spinifex and stands of timber. As we started our 4 kilometre walk towards the confluence, we came across of small group of wild camels, who seemed as surprised to see us as we were in seeing them. Again the walk covered all types of vegetation, from Desert Oak Trees, Blue Mallee, Grevilleas, Spinifex, plus other small native grasses.

On reaching the confluence, the Rawlinson Ranges made a great backdrop to this truly remote confluence. With photos in hand, we stood there for a few minutes admiring this true wilderness, knowing that as little as 50 years ago, local wild Aboriginal people roamed this country, living off of the land and had never seen a white man before.

Returning to our vehicles, we headed further North West along the Abandoned Gunbarrel to set up another perfect bush camp amongst the Desert Oaks that would have to make the most perfect bush camp.